Yes, this is also a very familiar plot engine for many movies and television shows, and no, Free Guy does not appear to be commenting on how utterly derivative both of its chosen plot engines are. Instead, Levy and screenwriters Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn go for a mash-up of The Truman Show, The Matrix and half a dozen other classic genre works, turning them all into a mushy be-yourself narrative for Reynolds’s Guy.Īnd even then, they refuse to let it play it out, constantly cutting away from Guy’s odyssey to spin out a B-plot about Comer’s character in the real world, trying to prove her AI engine was stolen by Taika Waititi’s swaggering tech bro. So it’s a time-loop movie as well as a simulation movie, which opens up possibilities that the filmmakers simply refuse to explore. (Hey, that’s another movie about an artificial intelligence that transcends its programming!) But Free Guy has no interest in sweetness: it immediately throws game cops at Guy, sending him running for his life… until he Groundhog Days back to waking up and starting over. (We learn this far too early, because the movie doesn’t trust its audience to have the patience for a gradual reveal.) Guy doesn’t really care about MolotovGirl’s side quest he just wants to take her out for ice cream, which is sweet in a Wall*E sort of way. Guy’s awakening comes when he falls for a player (Jodie Comer), who’s running around in the game searching for evidence of a real-world conspiracy. For a few minutes, Free Guy coasts nicely on that tension: what happens when Guy wakes up? And then we get the answer: what if They Live, but stupid.

He’s so good at it that it’s weird to see him wear the grin on its own you keep waiting for him to snap at someone. As a comic performer, Reynolds in his sweet spot when he’s doing his cheerful-sarcastic thing – delivering withering insults with a big, phony grin.

Free guy rating review